The two-day congress is expected to boost the peace process and kick-start efforts to draft a new constitution.

The Congress is sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran, the leaders of the three countries having agreed to the all-Syrian Congress in November. The main goal of the meeting is to gather “delegates from various political parties, internal and external opposition, ethnic and confessional groups at the negotiating table,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the time.

Over 1,500 delegates, representing various groups of Syrian society, have been invited to participate in the talks. The aim is to lay the foundation for a peaceful future for the war-torn country; the delegates are expected to begin work on a new constitution and discuss reconciliation in Syria.

It will be a landmark event, the first to give voice to so many different groups from Syrian society, including the government and the opposition. While instant reconciliation is unlikely, the Congress will get the ball rolling, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

“The work that is going on is extremely complex and thorny. But holding the congress itself is a significant step towards a political solution,” Peskov stated. “One should not expect that the political reconciliation will be achieved in Sochi.”

Boosting Geneva talks

The Congress in Sochi is not designed to replace, but rather to boost the Syrian peace process, namely the UN-sponsored Geneva talks, which have stalled for years, largely due to the insistence of some Syrian opposition representatives upon unrealistic preconditions before engaging in talks with the country’s government.

“We believe… that the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi will be able to create conditions for staging fruitful Geneva talks, taking into consideration that the part of the Syrian opposition that constantly makes preconditions, including for regime change, will be talked into sense by those who control it,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier in January.

Russia, Iran and Turkey hope the talks could compensate for the lack of progress in UN-brokered talks to end Syria’s seven-year war. The three countries have coordinated the establishment of deescalation zones in Syria – a separate initiative which many say has helped drastically reduce fighting in the Arab country.

On January 26, the ninth round of UN-brokered indirect peace negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups was held in the Austrian capital city of Vienna.

The UN talks have so far failed to achieve any concrete results, mainly due to the opposition’s insistence that the Syrian government cede power.

Saudi-backed group boycotts

The Saudi Arabia-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC), an umbrella body created back in 2016 to represent some of the Syrian rebel groups at the Geneva talks, has decided to boycott the Congress, just days before its launch. The group claimed it was supporting “credible political transition” in the Geneva format instead.

The HNC, however, has not demonstrated unity in boycotting the Sochi congress as part of the group, namely the so-called Moscow and Cairo opposition platforms, voted to attend the event and are expected to take part.

Despite the claims of parts of the Syrian opposition that the Sochi Congress would somehow jeopardize the international peace process, it was embraced by the main sponsor of the Geneva talks – the UN. The Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, will take part in the Congress after accepting Moscow’s invitation days before the event.

“In his message of greetings to the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad, the President of Russia expressed hope that in 2018 the situation in Syria would continue changing for the better,” the Kremlin said. ”

Mr Putin noted that defeating terrorists and rapidly bringing the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic back to normal would be in the best interests of the whole world and would improve security in the Middle East.”

“In addition, Mr Putin confirmed Russia’s commitment to assisting the Syrian Arab Republic in upholding its state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and promoting a political settlement and economic recovery,” the Kremlin added.

The Russian military began the mission against militants of the ISIS and Al Nusra Front terrorist groups in Syria on September 30, 2015 following an official request by the Syrian government. Earlier this month, President Putin hailed the defeat of ISIS terrorists in Syria during a visit to the country and also announced plans to withdraw a “significant part” of Russia’s troop presence in Syria.

“The fact that we defeated ISIS, one of the main terrorist groups, here in Syria is extremely important for Syria, Russia, and the entire world,” Putin said on December 11, when addressing the Russian military at the Hmeymim base.

Bashar al-Jaafari said the Syrian opposition – supported by Saudi Arabia – was setting a pre-condition of the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as part of discussions.

“The operators of the other parties; I mean, the Saudi authorities and their Western operators do not want Geneva process to succeed…Syria as a state won’t accept any terrorist blackmail that would influence the political course of the Geneva talks,” al-Jaafari noted.

He also censured Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy for Syria, for comments made to Swiss television on Wednesday calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “have the courage” to convince his Syrian counterpart to hold new elections.

“His statement undermined his mandate as a facilitator of the talks, which will affect the entire Geneva process,” al-Jaafari said.

He said Mistura had made an “error” in the interview and his mandate as mediator would be reviewed. “Nobody can exert pressure on us,” he said.

In response to a question about the coincidence of terrorist attacks increase in Syria with the start of each round of Geneva, al-Jaafari said that the operators of the armed terrorist groups are themselves the operators of the other party in Geneva and have been sending bloody messages to influence the Geneva sessions and events.

He also pointed out that to fight terrorism in a legal way, this requires cooperating with the Syrian government rather than relying on an illegal foreign military presence on the Syrian territory, meaning the illegal US military presence, stressing that the fight against ISIS terrorist organization is a duty of all national forces in Syria.

The previous rounds of negotiations under the auspices of the UN over the past five years have failed to achieve tangible results, mainly due to the Saudi-backed opposition’s insistence that the elected Syrian government cede power.

The motion was prepared by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the heads of all four parliamentary caucuses. It was drafted as a suite of amendments to the bill, allowing for websites of banned or extremist organizations to be blocked without requiring approval from the courts.

The text of the amendment defines affected mass-media outlets as legal entities that are “registered in a foreign nation, or a foreign structure that operates without registering as a company, engaged in spreading printed, audio, audio-visual or any other content prepared for an unlimited group of people.”

The bill does not mention any particular companies or countries. It specifies that the final decision in classifying mass media outlets as foreign agents should be made by the Justice Ministry.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow will resort to reciprocal measures in response to US steps against Russian media, which he called an “attack on freedom of speech.”

This comes after the US ordered Russia’s leading global TV network, RT America, to register as a foreign agent.

The US Department of Justice demanded that by Monday, the company that supplies all services for RT America in the US has to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The legislation was implemented in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda on US soil.

The warning by the two powerful global powers comes after South Korean President Moon Jae-in has ordered a probe after his Defence Ministry failed to inform him that four more launchers for the controversial US THAAD anti-missile system had been brought into the country.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system battery was initially deployed in March in the southeastern region of Seongju with just two of its maximum load of six launchers to allegedly counter a growing North Korean missile threat. However, Russia and China believe the deployment is just an excuse by the US to target the two countries. Separately on Tuesday, the US military conducted it first-ever reported missile defense test involving a simulated attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Putin vows Russia will respond

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his country sees the latest development of US anti-missile system in South Korea as a challenge and will not leave it without a response.

“This issue is a major concern for us and we have been constantly voicing it for decades. This disrupts the strategic balance in the world,” Putin underlined while talking to foreign media on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday. “But the world is silent and nobody listens to us.”

“They have elements in their ABM system in Alaska and now in South Korea. Do we have to look at this helplessly and do the same in Eastern Europe? Of course not. We contemplate our response to this challenge,” he added.

Putin said Russia doesn’t believe Western assurances that the ABM system is not directed against Russia and is working on ways to countering it. He said it was de facto part of an arms race.

The Russian president said the US used to justify the deployment of ABM sites in Europe by a perceived threat from Iran, but the nuclear deal with Tehran failed to alter its deployment. So he considers the justification of ABM deployment in Asia-Pacific and the threat from North Korea equally dubious.

“It’s not about North Korea. If tomorrow North Korea declares it is stopping nuclear tests and canceling its rocket program, the US will continue building its ABM system under some new pretext or without one at all,” he said.

China voices concern over secret deployment

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has expressed its deep concern over the omission of information from South Korean government briefings about the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system.

When Chinese Foreign Policy Spokesperson Hua Chunying was asked during the regular press briefing on May 31 to comment about the South Korean Defense Ministry’s omission of information about the delivery of four more THAAD launchers in its briefing to the Blue House, she said that China was “deeply concerned about the relevant situation.”

“The deployment of THAAD by the US in the ROK jeopardizes China’s strategic security interests [and] disrupts regional strategic balance,” Hua went on to say, reaffirming China’s standard position. “We once again strongly urge the US and the ROK to stop and call off the deployment of THAAD.”

China, North Korea and Russia believe the objective of the deployment of THAAD deployment is part of a scheme to expand US hegemony. Beijing and Moscow also worry that the deployment would further destabilize the already-restive Korean Peninsula. They also say THAAD’s powerful radar system can penetrate their territory and challenge their security.

In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper published on Saturday, the Conservative politician also said Russian president Vladimir Putin would “rejoice” if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party won the June 8 election.

Referring to Putin, Johnson said: “Clearly we think that is what he did in America, it’s blatantly obvious that’s what he did in France [where incoming president Emmanuel Macron’s emails were hacked], in the western Balkans he is up to all sorts of sordid enterprises, so we have to be vigilant.”

He said Putin wanted “to undermine faith in democracy altogether and to discredit the whole democratic process.”

On Friday, Britain’s health system was subjected to a major cyber attack.

Johnson also told The Telegraph that rather than Britain having to pay a divorce bill for leaving the European Union, the EU could end up having to pay Britain because it had contributed to so many EU assets.

“They are going to try to bleed this country white with their bill,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported the EU might seek an upfront payment in 2019 of up to 100 billion euros ($109 billion). That sum was immediately rejected by British ministers.

He has told that the war against ISIL is an important experience for Russia. The Russian military technology and weaponry also got tested in this two year military experience in Syria against ISIL. Furthermore, he has appreciated the performance of Russian military in the worn torn Syria.

Russia got involved militarily in the Syrian crisis two years back on the request of the Syrian leadership. The aerial coverage and the air strikes have been instrumental in making the Syrian force take back the 75% ISIS occupied Syria, while at the moment, the ISIL hold has weakened in the country.

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